


chernobyl tumblings

by More_night



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Because of course he is, Canon Suicide, F/M, Gen, and valery is upset, boris just wants valery to drink, more ulana and boris having semi-rough sex, secretly flirting, sugar daddy!boris, ulana is doing boris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-04-24 04:23:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: Things posted on tumblr about the bravest, saddest radionuclides of all.





	1. boris takes valery's cat

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Чернобыль (драбблы с тамблера)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19755184) by [Tanets_chasov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanets_chasov/pseuds/Tanets_chasov)



 

* * *

 

 

Charkov walks up to Boris, steps soft and noiseless on the Kremlin's blue carpets. "Have you heard?" he asks.

"Heard what, Comrade Charkov?"

"Valery Legasov passed. Hanged himself yesterday in the early morning hours."

Boris absorbs the news.

"Doctors said it must have been near one and thirty in the night. And on April 26. Can you believe such a coincidence?" Charkov goes on.

Boris's throat has closed up, but words have to find a way out. They have to. "It is strange," he says. "Very strange."

"Did you know of his plans?"

"Of course not. I haven't spoken to Legasov since the Chernobyl trial," Boris says. "As you know."  
  


 

 

The day he spends torn between rageful grief and triumphant joy. Grief because Valery was the only good man he knew, had ever known. Joy because this is how the truth gets out--yesterday no one knew who Valery Legasov was, and then everyone does.

Charkov cannot keep Valery's suicide out of the papers--not with Glasnost.

Boris Shcherbina goes to Valery's apartment, because he has nothing to lose now, does he? A lone guard is at the door, dismissed quickly, not even daring meeting the eyes of a Central Committee member. Inside, all is still, as if Valery Legasov was just gone out for cigarettes. The bed is made, dishes are washed.

In the office, the rope has been detached and put down. He wants to drive his fist through one of the paper-thin walls, wants to scream and yell, wants to fight--it would be futile, but it would do him good, he would feel important, perhaps he would even feel strong.

But he does none of that. For a soft, rounded back brushes against his shins. Valery's cat--Sasha. They'd known each other so well, in the dark days of mid-summer at Chernobyl, that Valery had told him about his cat, whom his neighbour kept while he was in Chernobyl, working, dying.

Sasha is a cuddly, affectionate animal. Boris takes him in his arms and the cat clings to his coat with his claws, touches his forehead to Boris's cheek. God knows what they'll do with the cat. Kick him out on the streets maybe? Let him live the rest of his life with the neighbour, if Sasha's lucky?

Boris has the same feeling he had in Chernobyl: he knows what must be done, and he knows he'll do it.

He walks out with Sasha in his arms. And Sasha stays there, like he had just been waiting for him all that time.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i like cats and i always want them to be fine


	2. valery being semi-awkward with gorbachev

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during episode 4.

 

* * *

 

 

The phone in the command suite rings. Valery doesn't think, doesn't even put his pen down: he takes it.

Must be Tarakanov. "Yes?"

Silence.

It's not Tarakanov.

"Professor Legasov?"

Valery turns to lead, solid and cold. "Comrade General Secretary," he says. He glances across the room: Boris is sound asleep in an armchair, legs outstretched, the khaki vest draped over him. So exhausted even the phone didn't wake him. Help isn't coming. Okay--what now?

"Why are you answering the phone?"

"I... I thought..." He clears his throat. Not helping. "I expected a call from Comrade Tarakanov. I didn't think--"

"Where is Deputy Chairman Shcherbina?" The question comes lined in steel. It was less than forty-eight hours since Boris's fit of rage. Their work trailer still didn't have a new phone.

Sleeping? No, not sleeping. They're hard at work, they can't be sleeping--even if well, fuck, they barely sleep at all. And of course Gorbachev has to call now that Boris is getting one of the few hours of rest he'll get this day. Valery eyes Boris one more time--checking.

_"How to what?" Boris chuckles. "Lie?"_

"Yes! 'The heroic guidance of the Council of Ministers', 'the brave leadership of-"

"Tell them what they want to hear," Boris interrupts him softly. "Put some image in your head of what they hope to see. Tell them about that."

"How do I know that? Their hopes aren't mine! I just hope we don't..." His voice trails off. Die? No--they will die alright. Suffer too much? They'll suffer. But not as much as Valery feels is warranted.

Boris sighs, mid-exasperated. "Well, you learn that."

Valery hopes he's learned alright. "Comrade Shcherbina is occupied. Supervising the selection of men to clean the most exposed roof." The first plain lie--'occupied'--comes easiest. But for the rest, he pushes his voice through it--don't stop at men (living, breathing creatures with lives and loves), don't stop at the euphismistic 'most exposed' (a place where 90 seconds sucks the life out of you like sorcerers and ghosts in children's tales).

Silence. "I see." A pause. "Well. Have him contact my office when he returns."

"Certainl-"

The line clicks.

Valery sighs loudly, sits back emphatically. Gets a cigarette out.

"See? You're getting good at it."

Shcherbina's voice causes him to almost bolt out of the worn orange couch. Valery fetches his cigarette from where he had dropped it. "Were you awake all this time?"

"Not sure," Boris mumbles. He brings himself up and immediately grasps the vodka bottle.  
  
Valery points to the phone. He's not really sure if he can speak the words here. But Boris gets his meaning: _Are you calling him back_?

Boris gives Valery his minimal smile--the one that looks even more trustful than his full, teeth-showing grin. He nods slowly, downs his glass and reaches for the phone.

Valery frowns at him, gestures towards the door: he can walk out, leave Boris alone for what won't be an easy conversation. Boris shakes his head: no need. Then he pauses for a moment. The hard gaze comes on, the steady face, his back straightens, he seems to gain volume and strength. He glances at Valery while the line rings. _See? This is how you do it._

"You called Comrade General Secretary?" A beat. A long beat. "I dearly regret my outburst. It was a mere misunderstanding on my part. Of course I am aware of Premier Rizhkov's duty to the Council and the State."

Valery smokes. He looks at Boris. And he looks and looks. Is it odd, he thinks, that he should so admire such a thing as lying?

No, he decides.

 

 

* * *

 


	3. boris being a little nice to valery in ep 2

 

* * *

 

 

Once in his room at the Polissya, Valery paces and paces, fretful as all that must be done, all that should be done and the little he can do collide in his head. The window faces south and does not show the plant, but only a tall and dark patch of sky where the stars have been obscured by the smoke from the fire. The room's eerie silence feels frustrating compared to the violent twisting and turning of his thoughts.

After half a pack of cigarettes, he finds it in him to sit down on the couch with a pad of paper and a cheap plastic ink pen he found in a nightstand. He lacks everything here: he'll have to have notebooks, textbooks, blueprints and charts brought over. So he runs the calculations from his memory of the specs of an RBMK reactor. Assuming all the fuel rods are currently fissioning. Assuming perhaps .5 percent of the fuel has been ejected in the initial explosion. Assuming the explosion has pulverized a direct vertical access to the reactor-

A knock at the door startles him. Then an insistent, "Legasov."

He opens the door to reveal Boris Shcherbina. The Deputy's austere gaze has lost some of its harshness.

"200 tons of boron and 300 tons of sand are coming from Kiev. They'll be here in two hours. Then twice that by noon tomorrow."

Valery nods absently. "I ran the calculations--from the top of my head. It'll likely be about 5,600 tons. And we'll need helicopters, I assume, and lead plating to protect them. And potassium iodide pills for everyone."

Shcherbina's jaw clenches. Valery is not quite apt at telling the difference between what he must tell Shcherbina and what the man doesn't want to be told. "Have you eaten?" the Deputy asks.

Eating? No, Valery hasn't thought of eating: it seems surreal to him that he's still breathing at all. "Food's... contaminated. In the hotel here, or in Pripyat generally." And in the surrounding area, maybe for forty, fifty kilometers.

Shcherbina slips a pack of army rations from his wide coat. "Sprats and kasha. Pikalov's men arrived with these today. Should be clean." He points to a room to their left. "Tomorrow morning, knock at room 612 at 6. We'll talk with Moscow."

Valery says yes, numbly, rations in hand, and the next moment Shcherbina is gone, the tail of his coat swaying in his wake down the hall.

 

 

* * *

 


	4. boris with his hand on valery's knee

 

* * *

 

 

It's an entirely unremarkable thing. It's a world-changing thing.

It's soundless, it's nothing, it's tinier than any measurable gap. It's not something that Valery would have thought about, ever--not here, not like this. It's more invisible than radiation. It is a complex, subtle combination of the infinitely many atoms in both of them. (Boris could ask How many atoms in each of us? Trillions. Billions of trillions. Less than in reactor 4? Yes, but not that we'd see that difference: the numbers are too great.)

It happens when they are both drinking. They are done with their work. They sit on the steps of the work-trailer. Nearby, soldiers on patrol, masks and all, pretend that they do not watch them.

It happens under the night sky.

One moment, Valery inhales from his cigarette, thinking of how the Chernobyl nuclear plant smells like (cigarette smoke, vodka, fuel from the army trucks, lingering metallic dust and, far beneath all this, like grass and trees and farmland when the wind blows from the east).

The next moment, Boris Shcherbina's hand is on his knee. The full hand, palm, fingers. Boris's larger, greater hand.

There are eyes to go with that hand, Valery discovers. And a face--a face he has seen everyday for the last four months, and which he could spot in any crowd now, because perhaps he has never had any one closer to him than this man, this stranger, has become. This face is hard to recognize now, since the hand changes everything.

Valery knows what he is. He has always known. Some didn't know until they made friends, until they slept with girls the first time, until they were married, had children. Not he. He knew it in his bones, since the day he was born. He had always been careful, but he is very certain this is known, somehow. Not in the way the KGB knows things, spying on people, picking apart their words. Just in the way people sense it about him, like all is off in an inexplicable way.

Boris's hand tells him _I know_. Boris's face tells him _I have no idea this could happen_. Somewhere between hand and face, Boris is breaking apart.

The hand stays and stays. Valery looks at it and at the face, and at the face and at it. Boris has time still and Valery wants to leave him time. He hopes his face says _You can still take it back. You can still pretend nothing has happened. I won't stop you._

The hand stays, but it is about to fall because the face is changing. Something empty, something horrible is coming up, something undone.

Valery cannot stop them from dying, cannot stop killing others. But he can stop this.

He puts his hand on Boris's on his knee, palm atop palm, fingers aligned.

Boris's face changes, like a lantern lit up. It fills from the inside out. Of all the things there could be on this face, of the many things Valery has seen before on such faces in such occasions, there is no shame, no doubt. All there is there is solid and strong. It says _I have this. I have you._

"I..."

"It's alright," Valery says.

The soldiers return. Boris and Valery hear their steps before they see the beam of the flashlight.

They undo their hold and shift. Their bodies would speak of what has just happened.

"One more glass?"

Valery breathes, "Yes. One more glass."

Boris pours for them both, the cap of the bottle between his teeth. Valery smiles, wide, so wide, like he's opening up. He cannot forget that face.

 

 

* * *

 


	5. valery's birthday

 

* * *

 

 

They walk for a moment or two--to let some of the weight of the day's work come off their minds. (It's not as if it's going anywhere, but the walking does them good. So does the quiet of the night, the clear gaze of stars above, the wind that promises winter is coming.)

Boris says it when they reach the fountain, the usual middle point of their nightly walks. "Happy birthday, Valery."

Valery huffs. He had almost forgotten, it is true. "An odd place and time to celebrate, isn't it?"

Boris nods. "Still. Why don't you take the week off? Go back to Moscow?"

"And do what in Moscow? Worry about what's going on here?" He shakes his head. "No. I'd feel guilty not being here."

"Kiev, then. A few days. Drink. Get some sleep."

Another shake of Valery's head, with a mournful frown this time. By this point, he has learned that the only thing that can effectively stop Boris Shcherbina's doggedness is sheer candor. Candor he can do. "I'd  keep wondering if it's... my last birthday."

Yes, candor works well against Boris's obstinate temper. But sometimes it triggers something else in the otherwise rock solid Deputy Minister--a transparent despair like Valery has hardly ever seen. Boris stills, and something of that comes on his brow. "You said five years."

Valery shrugs and tries to keep his voice lighthearted. Ah, lighthearted. "Five years... Could be three, could be seven." He forces a more casual tone. "We'll know it when we get there."

To some extent, it seems to work, and Boris resurface--although he must have seen through Valery's tactics. "Hm." They circle the fountain. Their escort doesn't follow them around: they wait at the end of the park, smoking under a leafless birch tree. "Well--you should get something for yourself. Food, drink, whatever you like."

Valery chuckles in earnest this time. "What? Here?"

Boris stops and his tone becomes evasive. "We can have something brought in from outside."

"Boris. I wouldn't know what." He adds a glance that says, _Thank you, but do I look like I party?_

But Boris won't deviate so easily from his course. "How about that? If you don't pick something, I will." It's said almost exactly like a threat. "And if it's my pick, you'll get champagne, caviar and cigars."

"You smoke cigars?"

"On my birthday, I do." A pause. "So what will it be?"

Okay. Valery surrenders. His appetite has decreased steadily. (There's no knowing, naturally, if that's the radiation or the ordeal itself, but he barely makes it through a whole meal anymore. Boris and his ever watchful eye will have noticed that, even if he's kind enough not to mention it, the same way Valery doesn't mention the dreams he hears Boris having.) So, no food. But, well... "Champagne." He considers it as he says it. "I've only drunk that twice in my life."

"Have you drunk the French one?"

"No. Never the French one."

Boris nods, content. Victory obtained. "We'll get you that then. Anything else come to mind?"

The we sounds royal in that, because of course, not Valery nor anyone else on the commission here will have anything to do with it. He might hear a phone call being made from Boris's room, and then--tada--it'll be like it came from the sky. Even if champagne isn't exactly legit party stuff. Even if there's no telling how hard it is to obtain this kind of thing wherever Boris will get it from and have it brought all the way out here.

There's something else. Perhaps Valery should take it for granted at this point. But he'd like to hear Boris say it. Like is probably not quite the word for it. It's stronger than that. "Will you drink it with me?"

The taller man stops in his tracks, cool fire in his pale eyes. "Are you out of your mind? Of course, I'll drink with you Valera."

Boris reaches out and throws an arm around Valery, not for long, but the hold is firm. It leaves a trail of warmth in its wake.

 

 

* * *

 


	6. ulana/boris with distressed valery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Jennytheshipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper) put this in my head--praise be to you!

 

* * *

 

 

Things are nearly invisible in the Soviet Union; maybe these things are invisible everywhere; really, Valery wouldn't know. He notices small things first. Since she's returned from Hospital Number 6 and her overnight stay at Lubyanka, Ulana isn't the same. She comes from time to time to Chernobyl, and mostly they talk on the phone with her in Minsk. He likes her input on things. That's not quite true: he wants to talk, to confide, to unburden his soul; he wants to hear her voice, because of them all, she's the sane one.

He tries not to let it show--but, sometimes, from the way she sighs, it's obvious he's failed. He always finds a way to cut the conversation short then. He knows he's weak, there's no need to show it too.

"Why don't you talk to Shcherbina about these things?" she asks him, after he tells her about Pikalov--he's gone blind, in a blink with him and Boris in the banquet room, he wasn't even upset about it, just said "Comrades, I can't see" and that was it.

Valery says, "I don't know... We... We don't talk, but in a way we do, I suppose." He sighs. "I don't want to make it worse for him by talking about it."

 _So you're making it worse for me_... For all her brashness, Ulana doesn't point it out. Instead she says, "Well, maybe he wants to talk about it with you."

Valery huffs. "How would you know that?"

"I'm just saying he might, that's all. Good night, Valery." She hangs up.

She despised Shcherbina at first--he's pretty sure of that. Then it just went away. He doesn't really know when or how, but it did. Maybe it's this place, he figures. He hated Boris at first too--and look at him now.

 

 

A strong boom wakes him from the dreadful half-dreaming state radiation sickness has given him instead of nights. He struggles for his glasses, peers out the window--nothing, no smoke. But the plant's on the other side of the building. He scrambles, puts his pants on, grabs a shirt and bolts out of his room.

Two doors down from his is Boris's room. The door is open, but it's not Boris coming out: Ulana steps out, her hair loose, her blouse untucked, her shoes in her hands. Her lips thin in a straight, flat line when she sees him. Then she's gone, jogging to the stairs, quiet on her bare feet.

Boris steps out then, notices Valery in the hallway. "What?" he says, as he walks past him.

This gets Valery moving again. They both get to the command suite, across the floor. They can see the plant from there: no smoke, no fire. There wasn't any shock, so it can't be that bad... But, really, it can't be good either.

Valery sits down, lights a cigarette, puts his shirt on. Boris is on the phone. His shoulders have slackened, and that must mean the explosion isn't serious. Boris has only got his pants and shirt on, no tie, no shoes--but still, he doesn't look half as undone as Valery.

"It's a truck. Just a truck. Here in Pripyat. A mile from the plant," Boris says when he puts the phone down. "Carburetor blew up."

"Hm."

 

 

He doesn't see Ulana again until mid-afternoon--truth be told, he didn't know she was back in Chernobyl. She sits down beside him in the banquet room. They talk job for a while--the sarcophagus is their only option, but still, it seems insane.

Valery must be quieter than usual, because Ulana eventually says, "Are you jealous?"

"No. No," Valery insists. "I'm... surprised. Not that..." He gets up, fingers with a cigarette before lighting it. "Not that it's my business."

She archs an eyebrow. "Why surprised?"

"I thought the two of you didn't like each other."

"We're having _sex_ , Valery. We don't need to like each other for that."

Valery nods, rubs his hand on his neck. Whenever he tries not to look nervous, that's when it comes out worst.

"Valery?"  
  
"I'm fine." Of course she doesn't believe him.

She comes round to where he stands, his back to her. "No, you're not," she probes him. Then she leans closer, lowers her voice, trying for friendly. Something to lighten the mood. "The sex is great, actually. We all cope with this place the way we can, I guess."

He chokes on the smoke of his cigarette. "I guess..."

He's not sure what finally gives him away. He can't keep anything from Ulana Khomyuk, can he? Especially not his failings. She's always a step ahead of him--and in this too.

Her eyes shut for a longer blink. "You're not jealous... _of him_ ," she finally realizes, mouthing the last two words.

Valery does his best to turn his eyes into daggers when he looks at her next. But threats have never suited him. So he pleads. "Please don't start."

There is no better moment for Boris Shcherbina to walk in, and so here he comes, his steady steps thudding on the carpet. He eyes them both, frowning, as Ulana goes back to her seat, and Valery finishes his cigarette.

 

 

* * *

 


	7. ulana/boris, post-prison sex

 

 

* * *

 

It happens when Ulana gets out of Lubyanka. Valery, qua Deputy Director of the Chernobyl Commission, stays behind to fill in paperwork in a brightly-lit room with paint peeling from the concrete walls. Outside, Boris Shcherbina waits by a car. A Volga. A chauffeur. Everything.

Shcherbina has never asked her anything, never talked to her even. But today, he asks her, same as Valery, "Did they hurt you?" She's certain she's not a pretty sight, but she must look ghastly enough.

She shakes her head no. "I'm..." She can't possibly tell this glorified bureaucrat how it was to stay in that cell. Eighteen hours, with only the pace of guards outside every hour or so. The occasional yell in the distance. With nothing in her mind but the images of melted skin and bone. Parcels of liver and kidney coming to Akimov's lips as he recounted their last attempt at opening the valves. She had not dared tell the dying engineer it was futile--worse than that. And why tell Shcherbina about those things? Doesn't he know? He's sent people there, hasn't he? She just says, "I'm exhausted."  
  
She catches his glance her way. There was nothing there when Shcherbina looked at her before. She was a physicist--something like Valery Legasov, but not quite (because whatever he's been through with Legasov, they're joined at the hip now). He didn't trust her. Conversely, she thought he was an idiot, often addressed chiefly Legasov in the room while he was there--which he had picked on.

He looks at Ulana differently now. There's a cool, nurturing impulse there--because he's a man of his generation, and she a woman just released from prison. There's surprise too. Admiration. The whole of it says _Congratulations, and welcome to the secret Chernobyl boys band_.

"We'll get you a room for tonight," Shcherbina says. "We leave from the airbase tomorrow at 6. We're going back."

"Back to Chernobyl?" He nods. The streets around seem dark to her. Tall lamp posts light the limits of the square, making it seem a mile wide; above them, the sky is cloudless, but starless too, and the only color is from the three red flags above the entrance. She hasn't been to Moscow since her student days. "I suppose I should thank you."

He shakes his head, bewilderment arching his brow in what strikes her as astounding nakedness on such a closed face. "I had nothing to do with it. That was all Valery."

He opens the car door for her. She assumes they'll wait for Valery (Shcherbina said _we_ , after all), but they don't.

The room is in something that must work as a hotel from Kremlin staff. From the outside, it looks like a small apartment building, old-fashioned, its facade painted blue. Inside, two seated soldiers greet Shcherbina by name. At the front desk, the stern dezhurnaya don't ask him any questions. While Ulana writes her name on a ledger, the chauffeur walks in with a brown paper bag. As she's opening it, Shcherbina is back at her side and explains, "There's some supper. If you're hungry."

She checks: a can of sprats that looks like it was lifted from some soldier's rations, a bottle of vodka, and pirozhki that she can't tell where he could get at this hour.

Later, Ulana'll think that there's no real explaining it. _He's a man, she's a woman_ would work, she supposes. The bleakness, maybe. Or the basic, stubborn, stupid need for human contact. Because she's been alone for most of her life, but it's never felt like how it felt like today.

Shcherbina has told her the car would be back at 5 to pick her up. He is going to leave. "The vodka. Would you like a glass with me, Comrade?" she says.

It's amazing how courageous she sounds. Despair can be like that.

A split second with nothing at all registering on Shcherbina's face. "Of course," he says.

When they get upstairs to the room, she does specify. "I don't really want a drink. Just a distraction."

Shcherbina could grin, say something clever. He looks like someone who makes crude jokes. No. He says, "I understand."

 

  
  
He asks her what she wants. She doesn't know if his gentlemanly respect is for women in general, or uniquely for those who've spent their day at Lubyanka (she suspects the latter). But the truth is--he has her pinned to the wall, with his hands under her skirt, she's undone his belt--and she feels empty. "What?" he asks her with that gravelly voice of his.

"I'm so tired of choosing. Everything. All the time," Ulana says at the ceiling.

He does grin at that point. And in one swift motion, he turns her around. Her cheek is pressed against the wall. Good walls they must be: she hasn't heard a thing (no radio, no talking, no nothing) from another nearby room in the ten minutes they've been here. God, why is everything so goddamn silent?

"Tell me if I hurt you," he mutters in her neck.

He feels her all over then, not slow, not careful. His fingers knead her breasts under the bra he's not unclasped. His breath is hot on her neck and his arms warm and heavy. She pushes her skirt and underwear down and fingers her clit, pressing down hard and long. She's not careful either.

He slips an arm around her to push her hips from the wall and fucks into her. His hand covers her own where she's handling herself. His grip is stronger than hers and he adds pressure to her palm, and that kind of suffocating, inescapable force is, it turns out, what she wanted. Fuck if she knew. She breathes in long, open-mouthed gasps against the wall.

He comes before her and stays inside, rocking his hips into her butt, until she comes too. It's not a mind-blowing thing: it's a long shudder that's like opening a floodgate. The flood is exhaustion and once the pleasure dims, she turns to cotton.

They take turns in the shower. Ulana cries where it feels safe, with the warm water on her face.

 

  
She wakes not really aware of having slept. Some dreary dawn light glows in the curtain. The bed beside her isn't unmade. Shcherbina's dressing. Freshly pressed pants, shirt and tie. There's clothing for her too. Her clothing, she realizes. Probably back from where she'd left it in the locker they'd given her at Hospital Number 6. She's happier than she would have ever known to drop the white nurse dress in a heap on the floor and leave it there.

Boris Shcherbina is an old man (she'd bet he has fifteen years on her, easy), and he's probably been sitting at a desk more frequently than not in recent years. Still, there is trace of muscles under the skin. (Quite a scar too: a zig-zag of pale, shimmering scar tissue on his left shoulderblade. "Germany?" Ulana asks. "Winter War.")

It's not as uncomfortable as it could be. Or she's had weirder things. They have the cheese pirozhki with vodka and tea as a surreal breakfast. The car will be there soon to pick them up, get them to the airbase. Back to Chernobyl. 

"How were they? The men from the staff you spoke to?" he asks her.

"Dying. Most of them have died now." She puts the pastry down. "One of them, Aleksandr Fyodorovich Akimov. They'd bandaged the skin on his face. When they removed the bandages, the skin came too. They had to remove some of his teeth from his mouth, because he would swallow them and choke."

Ulana tells him that to get it off her chest, but probably also to see how he'd react. His face doesn't change. Only his eyes widen slightly, until they're like a child's. And it's suddenly not quite the same man she's looking at. Then it's gone. "Hm." And he downs his vodka.

 

 

It's been on her mind since they'd left Lubyanka.

Ulana gives in to her impulse before they reach the car. They won't have much more chance to talk after that. "Okay. How did Valery get me out?"

Shcherbina snorts. "He _asked_ Deputy Chairman Charkov to let you go."

"What? Charkov-- _the KGB Chairman_?"

Shcherbina nods. "He walked right up to him. Told him you'd been arrested. Asked him about the agents following us. Asked him to just..." He draws some evanescent shape before him with his fingers. "Drop all of it."

"And Charkov-?"

"Said yes." Shcherbina's eyebrows are all over the place like he still can't believe it either. "' _Good day, Professor_ , he bade him," he says, hiding his soft Ukrainian accent and toning down to mimick Charkov's perfect Muscovite pronunciation and low voice.

Not long after that, she finds herself thinking that Boris Shcherbina is not an idiot.

 

* * *

 

 


	8. please drink valera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For [elenatria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenatria/pseuds/elenatria) based on [this post](https://elenatria.tumblr.com/post/186942850978/the-miners-are-making-good-progress-and-the) from tumblr (thanks also to the anonymous asker!).

 

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"The fire's out. It's out, Valera."

The cap of the vodka bottle flies through the room. Tiredly, Valery takes his eyes off of his numbers and notebooks.

"I know it's not over. But it's the beginning of the end."

"You mean, we are finally at the point where we can begin razing forests?"

Boris's shoulders drop. He stops pouring their drinks.

"Or do you mean this is finally when we can begin killing all animals and pets still left alive?"

This goes home: Boris sinks into a creaking chair.

"Or is it when we begin to dig up ground to bury the soil under itself?" Valery goes on.

Boris slams the bottle down. "Stop it," he rumbles. But commands have never worked with Valery. They have only made him stronger, the way metal hardens between anvil and hammer. So, "Please," Boris tries.

Valery presses his lips shut. He removes his glasses. When he puts them back on, Boris stares straight at him.

"Please drink."

Valery drinks. The first glass burns. The second glass goes down as smoothly as a gulp of fresh air, tingling at the back of his throat. He apologizes to Boris after the fourth one.

"It's just..."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter how much I drink. All of this will still be there in the morning," Valery says. This--not just the cramped work trailer, not just the plant either, but also Moscow's crawling hand nosing and poking. Not just the miners tunnelling under the sinking reactor--also the KGB burrowing into their heads. Not just the death of their kidney cells and bone marrow, shredded by gamma rays--also the more insidious death of the heart and ruin of the mind--and that has started before Chernobyl.

"What would make it go away?"

Looking up, Valery finds Boris warmer. His face is undone, his lips parted, red because of the drink. He grins in a way that makes Valery feels like there's a file on him that Boris has read. It contains every one of his most secret and intimate thoughts and desires, even those he's never admitted to himself. How often Valery has lain sleepless in the stale hotel room, hoping Boris knew. Wanting him to know.

At the eighth glass, he tells Boris--what would make it go away. He phrases it in euphemisms for the ears in the room. The words stumble out of his lips. In the end he speaks only half of them: the rest Boris guesses.

Boris tells him he knew about it. Always. About all of it. Valery is blushing from the drink already. The flush creeps downwards, past his crumpled collar. Boris smiles, showing teeth.

 

 

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	9. boris and his lapel pin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For pottedmusic.

 

 

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On the helicopter back to Moscow on their second day, Valery cannot stop staring. Not at his face, but at something just below that makes Boris think there's a stain on his tie. When Boris asks him what it is, Valery points at the red flag pin on his lapel.

"Metal is contaminated easily. What's this made of? Silver?"

"No. Some kind of brass," Boris says. "Contaminated how?"

Valery shrugs a shrug that is both certain and uncertain. You know how, it says.

Okay, Boris figures, let's do this. It's not as if he's fond of the thing.

"Where are we now?" he asks the pilot.

"Just over Pripyat, Deputy Chairman."

He gets up from his seat. Valery tracks him all the while, with these wide eyes of his. Wide like a fish's eyes. A fish having just realized it's out of the water.

One of the soldiers escorting them opens the loading door of the helicopter for him. Boris removes the pin from his lapel. He slips the butterfly back on.

And then with a strong swing of his arm, he casts the contaminated thing out from the flying helicopter. It falls quickly. Boris loses sight of it before he closes the door.

He goes back to his seat. Valery is still staring. This time Boris doesn't know what to make of it. It looks like Valery will say something. But then he swallows, and he cleans his glasses like he does when he's nervous.

Boris leans back. He strokes his lapel where the pin was. Well, fuck me, he thinks, I was a little bit fond of the thing.

 

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End file.
